I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed - there's always some percent of users who didn't read the FAQ, but I feel like it got much worse in recent months. I wonder, did karma threshold needed for downvoting get smaller or something? It's really sad to see interesting opinions get paler and paler due to downvotes of people who apparently disagree, but are too lazy to state what they disagree with exactly in a comment. Relatedly, posts that reiterate some common memes/ideas/misconceptions in a couple of sentences get promoted to a much higher degree than they used to. It's not to the point where HN would be unusable, far from it, but it certainly doesn't improve the experience.